Here’s 15 minutes of DontNod’s Vampyr

I’ve been keen on Life is Strange developer Dontnod’s Vampyr since it was first announced. Largely, it’s because I have a fascination with vampyric lore, and also because I need a good vampire game. The last one that really grabbed my jugular was Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, and that came out quite some time ago.

Vampyr sounds intriguing though. Set in an early 20th century London, the game puts you in the recently turned shoes of Jonathan Reid, a doctor who now has to decide whether his newly undead status means he still has to uphold the Hippocratic Oath. Until very recently, all we’ve seen is concept art and teasers. Unless you pay a lot of attention IGN, that is. Anyway, publisher Focus Home Interactive has released a 15 minute look at some actual gameplay.

Do bear in mind that this is pre-alpha gameplay, which should account for some of the jarring animation, odd lip-synching and other anomalies that are par for the course when games are still in development.

“Investigate the people of London, and peer through their bodies to see the quality of blood that flows through them. Perhaps you find a terrible person who you believe deserves to die, and decide to feed on him. But what if he suffers from poor quality blood? Perhaps a father – with no reason to lose his life – has the purest blood, and will therefore gain you greater experience points… your moral choices will directly affect the game world as you struggle to come to terms with your human/vampire duality.Taking lives in London is not easy. Killing too many in a district may cause its infrastructure to collapse and turn into disarray. Every single life will also have a butterfly effect on the other NPCs surrounding them. Every life you take away will have consequences for the city and the people around them: Cursed be the choice!”

I still find it rather intriguing – especially if the moral choices have as much of a real outcome as they seem to. Mostly, I hope that we’ll finally have another good vampire game to play. It’s coming to PC and new consoles in 2017.